Argentina’s “FAN,” Colombia’s “Gloria and the Dragon” and Peru’s “Laureano” figure among seven titles at Sanfic Industria’s Productoras Lab, a novel pitching program and training facility for emerging, first or second-feature women producers in Latin America. All three titles carry good word of mouth.
The producers will attend tutorials on how to think from early development about film finance, distribution and boosting the international reach of their productions.
“We received a lot of highly distinctive projects from all over Latin America. It was complex to select just seven producers through their projects which take in both fiction features and documentaries,” Gabriela Sandoval, Sanfic Industria director, told Variety.
Below, the final cut, and some details about the projects and their female producers, where known:
“FAN,” (Mariela di Naro, Argentina)
Director-producer di Naro’s first feature, a doc portrait of Euge Cabral (48), a die-hard fan of singer Luis Miguel who discovers he will tour Argentina in 2023. Euge and her friends set out to get tickets as close to the stage as possible, braving tensions with partners and family.
“Gloria and the Dragon,” (“Gloria y el Dragón, Daniela Echeverri, Colombia)
Set up at Colombia’s Gatoencerrado and directed by Carlos Heredia Cruz, Gloria, a little girl from Colombia’s Pacific region, embarks on a journey through the jungle in order to reunite with her father, confronting realities she’s never known before. Echeverri produces.
“Her Ocean,” (“El Mar, la Mar,” María Paz Barragán, Peru)
Ray, adolescent, gay, helps local fishermen until, drunk at a party, he dons makeup and a dress. Repudiated by his family and village, he escapes to Iquitos, finds friends and competes in the Miss Amazonas trans beauty pageant, until the pandemic forces him back to his village to face his friends and family. Written and directed by Julián Amaru Estrada and produced by Barragán, who’s made web series and shorts, and written and directed shorts. She calls “Her Ocean” a “LGBTQ coming-of-age drama and story of love and courage.”
Her Ocean
Credit: Maria Paz Barragan
“Los Invisibles,” (Heidy Bacá, Guatemala)
Also at Locarno’s Open Doors, a social realist tale directed by Andrés Rodríguez plumbing domestic migration in Guatemala. Alejandro, 17, an Indigenous cell-phone street vendor in Guatemala City. He travels back to his hometown to aid his AIDs-ill mother seek state health care as “this invisible person seeks to find his place in a society that excludes him,” Rodriguez says. Bacá serves as an assistant executive producer at La Danta Films, a burgeoning Guatemala-based talent hub co-founded by Cannes 2019 Camera d’Or winner César Díaz (“Our Mothers”).
“Laureano,” (Jaisia Figueroa Idrogo, Peru)
Set up at Norcinema in northern Peru and to directed by Claudia Capatinta, a portrait of a man suffering from mental health problems, to be shot, if a teaser if anything to go by, with sweeping aerial vistas of the high Andes. A buzzy doc feature, produced by Figueroa and Carlos Guerrero.
“Pupos y Coronas,” (Mariuxi Alemán, Ecuador)
A doc feature deep-dive into the world of LGBTQ non-professional soccer in rural Ecuador where trans women contend with job insecurity by day and contend for the local indoor soccer championship at night. Homosexuals and trans women, director Byron Sánchez argues, can play soccer, being themselves, with total freedom. Produced by Alemán, a producer and cultural manager now in post on the documentary feature film “From the Center of the World to Cali.”,
“Thread and Needle for Women,” (“Hilo y agujas para las hembras,” María Jesús Godoy Abrigo, Chile)
Lili, 40, a stage designer, wins a scholarship to study in the U.S., but hesitates about accepting as her actress mother Marta, 70, acting in “La casa de Bernarda Alba,” begins to suffer Alzheimer’s disease. Marta abandoned Lili and her twin brother when they were children to act in Argentina. Set up at Chile’s Milla Films, founded by Godoy Abrigo in 2015 and a producer on doc web-series “Disidentes,” chronicling Chile’s dramatic civil protests from 2019. Constanza Torres directs.